Melissa Abbate
EDC 102H
12 September 2011 Personal Expertise
Malcolm Gladwell once said, “…Researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” There haven’t been many things in life that I’ve spent ten thousand hours doing; which adds up to being equivalent to 416.6 days. I’ve spent a good portion of my time writing short stories and things of the like, but even that I don’t consider myself an expert on. I don’t have a handle on grammar too well, and my vocabulary tends to get repetitive. Instead, I’ll deem my area of personal expertise the languages, which my school also christened me an expert in by rewarding me the Departmental award my Senior year.
I’ve always had an edge over other kids when it concerns languages. At my school, Spanish was a required course, so I’ve been taking it since second grade. The early exposure brought me up with an ear to it. Also, my grandparents, both of whom were born in Italy, speak a dialect of Italian called Molise. Although dialects differ greatly from the unifying Italian, my exposure to foreign languages when I was younger helped bolster my aptitude for this area. The reason why I could call myself an ‘expert’ in this area is a combination of both contests and test grades. I consistently scored the highest in my Spanish, Italian, and my Latin class. I was considered a ‘prodigy’ in my school, and apparently my knowledge was impressive enough to my teachers considering the fact that no one spoke a foreign language in my household. My IB (a program similar to AP, but on the international level) tests, which I took last year, revealed that I had received excellent marks on both my Spanish Higher Level exam and my Italian Standard Level exam.
As well as that, I’ve memorized multiple poems in these languages and performed them at contests. I started doing this my Sophomore year, in which I performed a poem called ‘Sonatina’ by Rubén Darío. At the time, my accent was awfully American, and although I was the sole person who dressed up for the contest, I did not place. To be fair, though, it was nerve-wracking performing a poem in a language in which I sounded like a badly tanned tourist, especially in front of a few hundred people. However, the next year made me even more determined. That was the year I started Italian as well, and so I competed in the poetry contest in both languages. That year I presented Letanías de Nuestro Señor Don Quixote (The Litanies of Our Sir Don Quixote) by the same man, and I won first prize that year. For Italian, I performed Dante Alighieri’s ‘Tanto Gentile e Tanto Onesta Pare’ (Very Gentle and Very Honest She Appears To Be) in which I won second prize. My Senior year, I again took first prize in Spanish by perfoming another poem written by Rubén Darío entitled ‘EHEU’. I didn’t place that year in Italian, but that did not deter me.
Despite my obvious success in the languages, and despite the fact that I chose this as my area of expertise, I am by no means an expert. This was just the area that I am most familiar with. I am not fluent in either Spanish or Italian; in fact, when I went to Italy for a month to visit my cousin, I had a very hard time understanding what was going on. Molise I can understand quite well, but the actual language differs greatly. If my family and others spoke Italian slowly to me, I could slowly respond. But if they spoke as fast as we Americans speak English, I would be lost in translation. My accent, while very good when I perform poetry, is the farthest thing from passable when I speak impromptu. It is much easier to pronounce words correctly when I have them memorized, as opposed to conjugating the verb in my head and pondering about it’s irregularities if it has any.
Though I may not be an expert in it yet, that is what I hope to become by the time I graduate URI. I did not simply choose to dual major in these languages because I won an award or a few prizes, or because they come easy to me. I’m blessed in the fact that I love what I’m good at. In fact, before Sophomore year, I hated Spanish class. But one of my teachers’ passion was contagious, and it spread to me like wildfire. I actually didn’t like her at the beginning of that year because I thought she was a little odd, but because she recruited me into the poetry contest, she began to grow on me. Also, she helped me through the most difficult time of my life, and I will never forget how selflessly she sacrificed her time for me. These factors among others influenced my passion for the class.
After Sophomore year, everything changed. I became such a bona fide nerd in those classes that people would meander over to me and ask me for a dictionary, ask me for answers to questions, ask me what I put as an answer on a quiz, and roll their eyes whenever I would raise my hand to say something. No one was shocked when I became Vice President of Spanish Honor Society, and no one was shocked when I won the World Language award at the Senior Awards Ceremony. It’s almost embarrassing to admit, but when I took the aforementioned IB tests, I spent all three hours taking that exam, while most people only spent two. I enjoyed taking that test. Yes, I wrote it: I enjoyed taking that test. I was giggling quietly to myself when I wrote an extravagant essay; a little on the ridiculous side -- I wrote about how I became Don Quixote and fought trees -- but I smiled through it nonetheless. If one thinks that’s bad, that’s not even the worst of it. In order to graduate the IB Program, I was required to write something called an Extended Essay, a four thousand word paper (around eighteen pages) about something we elected to write about. I elected to write mine entirely in Spanish about the differences between the Gypsy Flamenco and the Spaniard’s Flamenco. That summer, my dictionary became my best friend.
As much as it pains me to admit, I know that being a nerd and being an expert are two different things. The reason why I chose URI is because it had such a vast language department, and I am excited above all else to take a few poetry classes I’ve seen. I have always craved a language class on a more sophisticated level, and friends who take Spanish or Italian here say that the teacher speaks nothing but that language. I find that very cool, and I am very excited to get my Gen Eds out of the way and start my major. I hope by the time I graduate, I can call myself an expert and get a degree. But above all that, I hope to put in my own ten thousand hours.
EDC 102H
12 September 2011
Personal Expertise
Malcolm Gladwell once said, “…Researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” There haven’t been many things in life that I’ve spent ten thousand hours doing; which adds up to being equivalent to 416.6 days. I’ve spent a good portion of my time writing short stories and things of the like, but even that I don’t consider myself an expert on. I don’t have a handle on grammar too well, and my vocabulary tends to get repetitive. Instead, I’ll deem my area of personal expertise the languages, which my school also christened me an expert in by rewarding me the Departmental award my Senior year.
I’ve always had an edge over other kids when it concerns languages. At my school, Spanish was a required course, so I’ve been taking it since second grade. The early exposure brought me up with an ear to it. Also, my grandparents, both of whom were born in Italy, speak a dialect of Italian called Molise. Although dialects differ greatly from the unifying Italian, my exposure to foreign languages when I was younger helped bolster my aptitude for this area. The reason why I could call myself an ‘expert’ in this area is a combination of both contests and test grades. I consistently scored the highest in my Spanish, Italian, and my Latin class. I was considered a ‘prodigy’ in my school, and apparently my knowledge was impressive enough to my teachers considering the fact that no one spoke a foreign language in my household. My IB (a program similar to AP, but on the international level) tests, which I took last year, revealed that I had received excellent marks on both my Spanish Higher Level exam and my Italian Standard Level exam.
As well as that, I’ve memorized multiple poems in these languages and performed them at contests. I started doing this my Sophomore year, in which I performed a poem called ‘Sonatina’ by Rubén Darío. At the time, my accent was awfully American, and although I was the sole person who dressed up for the contest, I did not place. To be fair, though, it was nerve-wracking performing a poem in a language in which I sounded like a badly tanned tourist, especially in front of a few hundred people. However, the next year made me even more determined. That was the year I started Italian as well, and so I competed in the poetry contest in both languages. That year I presented Letanías de Nuestro Señor Don Quixote (The Litanies of Our Sir Don Quixote) by the same man, and I won first prize that year. For Italian, I performed Dante Alighieri’s ‘Tanto Gentile e Tanto Onesta Pare’ (Very Gentle and Very Honest She Appears To Be) in which I won second prize. My Senior year, I again took first prize in Spanish by perfoming another poem written by Rubén Darío entitled ‘EHEU’. I didn’t place that year in Italian, but that did not deter me.
Despite my obvious success in the languages, and despite the fact that I chose this as my area of expertise, I am by no means an expert. This was just the area that I am most familiar with. I am not fluent in either Spanish or Italian; in fact, when I went to Italy for a month to visit my cousin, I had a very hard time understanding what was going on. Molise I can understand quite well, but the actual language differs greatly. If my family and others spoke Italian slowly to me, I could slowly respond. But if they spoke as fast as we Americans speak English, I would be lost in translation. My accent, while very good when I perform poetry, is the farthest thing from passable when I speak impromptu. It is much easier to pronounce words correctly when I have them memorized, as opposed to conjugating the verb in my head and pondering about it’s irregularities if it has any.
Though I may not be an expert in it yet, that is what I hope to become by the time I graduate URI. I did not simply choose to dual major in these languages because I won an award or a few prizes, or because they come easy to me. I’m blessed in the fact that I love what I’m good at. In fact, before Sophomore year, I hated Spanish class. But one of my teachers’ passion was contagious, and it spread to me like wildfire. I actually didn’t like her at the beginning of that year because I thought she was a little odd, but because she recruited me into the poetry contest, she began to grow on me. Also, she helped me through the most difficult time of my life, and I will never forget how selflessly she sacrificed her time for me. These factors among others influenced my passion for the class.
After Sophomore year, everything changed. I became such a bona fide nerd in those classes that people would meander over to me and ask me for a dictionary, ask me for answers to questions, ask me what I put as an answer on a quiz, and roll their eyes whenever I would raise my hand to say something. No one was shocked when I became Vice President of Spanish Honor Society, and no one was shocked when I won the World Language award at the Senior Awards Ceremony. It’s almost embarrassing to admit, but when I took the aforementioned IB tests, I spent all three hours taking that exam, while most people only spent two. I enjoyed taking that test. Yes, I wrote it: I enjoyed taking that test. I was giggling quietly to myself when I wrote an extravagant essay; a little on the ridiculous side -- I wrote about how I became Don Quixote and fought trees -- but I smiled through it nonetheless. If one thinks that’s bad, that’s not even the worst of it. In order to graduate the IB Program, I was required to write something called an Extended Essay, a four thousand word paper (around eighteen pages) about something we elected to write about. I elected to write mine entirely in Spanish about the differences between the Gypsy Flamenco and the Spaniard’s Flamenco. That summer, my dictionary became my best friend.
As much as it pains me to admit, I know that being a nerd and being an expert are two different things. The reason why I chose URI is because it had such a vast language department, and I am excited above all else to take a few poetry classes I’ve seen. I have always craved a language class on a more sophisticated level, and friends who take Spanish or Italian here say that the teacher speaks nothing but that language. I find that very cool, and I am very excited to get my Gen Eds out of the way and start my major. I hope by the time I graduate, I can call myself an expert and get a degree. But above all that, I hope to put in my own ten thousand hours.